Surveillance peer-review

After 23 months of silence in the country, 4 cases of wild polio virus were detected in 2016, making Nigeria the only polio endemic country in the continent.
Several issues have been identified as factors militating against the eradication of polio in the country.

Among such is surveillance which needs strengthening. To achieve this, surveillance peer review exercise was conducted in four (4) high performing states namely Ekiti, Edo, Plateau and the FCT. As part of NSTOP’s contribution, sixteen (16) staff and residents were deployed to participate in the exercise.

Over 400 Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) cases previously reported and verified as true AFP with adequate stool samples collected were reviewed by the teams. It is pertinent to note that majority of the AFP cases reviewed were found to be truly concordant with the information available in the AFP surveillance database.

States were debriefed of the findings and improvement plans were developed by the various teams addressing identified gaps. Also, lessons learnt from the exercise have been documented and will be shared with the relevant stakeholders at the national level. For the achievement of the desired vision, a strong AFP surveillance network is one of the major mile stones for delisting a country from polio endemic countries and certification as polio free.